Here is a story and recipe from a fellow blogger. Please follow the link back to read lots of other interesting stuff!

It was rainy and cold and dark all weekend, which was perfect for my mood. We pretty much huddled in our apartment for two days straight, playing Madden, watching scary movies, eating takeout, playing darts, and drinking beers. It was, to say the least, very renewing.

So today for Sunday dinner we wanted something along those same lines - something renewing, something hearty, something with a lot of protein, something that would get us prepared for Monday morning. The answer was obvious: one of our favorite dishes, my maternal grandmother’s red beans and rice recipe.

This classic Louisiana Creole dish was traditionally served each Monday night, using the leftover ham from Sunday dinner. It also gave women a break from cooking on Monday, the traditional wash day, since the beans are easy to prepare and made to simmer on the stove throughout the day. Sure, you can always run down to New Orleans, where red beans and rice is usually served as the Monday lunch special at local restaurants, or you could cook some up yourself, whenever you pleased.

I find it to be an awesome, original alternative to chili to make for Sunday and Monday night football game get-togethers - it’s spicy and it sits well all day so that guests can fix a bowl whenever they’re hungry. The best part is that it is both easy to freeze and tastes awesome after being reheated. Oh, and it’s dirt cheap to make, which is probably another reason my mom grew up eating it so often along with her seven brothers and sisters on a little farm in Louisiana.

Red Beans and Rice

1 pound bag of dried kidney beans
3 ribs of celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
1 pound smoked sausage, sliced, or ham hocks or left over ham (I put in both sausage and diced ham, and it is awesome)
1/2 t. black pepper
Cayenne pepper (until it’s as spicy as you’d like)
Salt to taste (The sausage/ham will add salt, so be careful.)

* Rinse and sort red beans; soak for at least a couple of hours.
* Drain beans.
* Sauté celery, onion and garlic in 2 tablespoons of butter (or some extra virgin olive oil)
* Add sausage or ham or both.
* Add about10 cups of water, beans and bay leaf.
* Bring to boil; Simmer for 2 hours or until beans are tender. Add more water if necessary.
* Smash some of the beans against the side of the pot to thicken the beans once they are tender.
* Serve over hot rice.

You can also cook them in a crock pot overnight or during the day while you’re at work. I always make a pan of cornbread to go with it. I also make it healthier by trimming the fat off of the ham, using spicy turkey sausage, and eating it over brown rice.

http://seaswell.wordpress.com/

Thanks to Sarah Aswell, who posts a new southern recipe on her blog every Sunday night. Check it out at the above link.

All the recipes on this site can be easily adapted for use with a slow cooker or Crock pot. Make sure you have a sufficiently large slow cooker to hold 5-7 quarts. If you don’t, you can cut the recipes in half to fit in a smaller slow cooker.

Simply prepare everything exactly as the recipe calls for, including sorting, rinsing and soaking dry beans, and sauteing vegetables and meat.

Place all the ingredients (except the rice and garnish) into the slow cooker instead of adding them to a Dutch oven and cover.

• For whole recipes (1 lb of beans): cook on high heat for 1-2 hours, then turn the pot down to low heat for 10 -12 hours.
• For recipes cut in half (half pound of beans): cook on low heat for 8 hours.

Rice must be prepared separately from the beans.

Hi everyone,

I wish I could just put Emeril’s recipes on this blog, but because of copyright restrictions I can only post the links to his recipes. They look delicious! Lots of flavor, but not too spicy. Both recipes have a lot of meat. The first link is to Emeril’s website, the second link is to the food network’s website.

Link to Emeril’s Red Beans and Rice Recipe on Emerils.com

Link to Emeril’s Red Beans and Rice Recipe on the foodnetwork.com

Remember me saying there are many recipes, and even individual cooks have multiple recipes for red beans and rice? Here’s a prime example. These two recipes are different enough from each other to produce two subtly different, and I’m sure, equally mouthwatering dishes.

I’m going to try these recipes soon. I don’t have all the ingredients to make them exactly as published, so it will have to wait for a trip to the grocery store.

If you try one before I do, please leave me a comment with the recipe you tried and let us all know how you liked it.

Chef Lou is the Ozarks Cooking Columnist for News-Leader.com of Springfield, MO

This recipe looks really spicy! It has Tabasco sauce, crushed red pepper and Tony Chachere’s.

Serves 8

• 2 thick slices of salt pork
• 1 cup red bell pepper, small dice
• 1 cup green bell pepper, small dice
• 1 cup onion small dice
• 1 pound smoked sausage
• 3 cans red beans, with liquid
• 1 cup diced tomato
• 1 cup tomato juice
• 1 tablespoon Tony Chachere’s Original (creole) Seasoningor blackening powder
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 2 teaspoons Tabasco sauce
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• salt and black pepper to taste

Sauté the salt pork in a large skillet to render out the fat, then remove the salt pork. (You want about 1/4 cup of rendered grease.)

Add the vegetables and sauté in the rendered fat until tender.

Add the sausage and cook on medium high for about five minutes. Toss in the tomato and the canned beans.

Add all of the spices and seasonings.

Simmer for about 15 minutes.

Serve over plain white rice.

Source:
Spice up red beans and rice with fresh additions

by Chef Lou Rice, Ozarks Cooking

Note: if you substitute dry red beans for canned red beans, remember to sort, rinse and soak them, and cook them for 4 or more hours until very tender.

In short, no.

Red beans are not the same variety as red kidney beans. They are smaller and have a smoother taste and texture than their kidney bean cousins. They are the most popular in the Caribbean region, where south Louisiana got it’s passion for red beans and rice.

This also demonstrates that the differences between Creole and Cajun are no longer widely recognized. Red beans are the beans originally used in the Creole or New Orleans recipes that originated in the Caribbean. Red kidney beans are just another type of dry bean Cajuns ate as a staple food along with rice.

Today, however, red beans and red kidney beans are used interchangeably in recipes for red beans and rice. I use red beans when they’re available. Otherwise I use red kidney beans.

Red Beans            Red Kidney Beans

References:
http://www.beans4health.com/dictionary.html

Louis Armstrong’s Spicy Pepper Cornbread

• 3 cups yellow cornmeal
• 1 cup cream-style corn
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 3 eggs
• 1 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup chopped jalapeno peppers

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and pour in a 9- by 13-inch ungreased pan. Bake in preheated oven at 350 for 30 minutes.

Reference article website: Spice up red beans and rice with fresh additions by Chef Lou Rice

This is Louis Armstrong’s Recipe:

• 1 pound kidney beans (sorted, rinsed and soaked, see below)
• 1/2 pound salt pork (slab bacon may be used if preferred)
• 1 small can of tomato sauce (if desired)
• 6 small ham hocks or one smoked pork butt
• 2 onions, diced
• 1/4 green (bell) pepper
• 5 tiny or 2 medium dried peppers
• 1 clove of garlic, chopped
• salt to taste

Wash beans thoroughly, then soak overnight in cold water. Be sure to cover beans. To cook, pour water off beans, add fresh water to cover. Add salt pork or bacon and let come to a boil over full flame in (5-quart) covered pot [or dutch oven]. Turn flame down to slightly higher than low and let cook 1 1/2 hours. Add diced onions, bell pepper, garlic, dried peppers, and salt.

Cook 3 hours.

Add tomato sauce and cook 11/2 hours more, adding water whenever necessary. Beans and meat should always be just covered with liquid, never dry.

Serve over cooked rice, with a fresh pot of Community Coffee, and Spicy Pepper Cornbread (recipe in next post).

Dutch Ovens:

• Le Creuset 7.25-qt. Round Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven, Chestnut
• Calphalon 6-qt. Everyday Nonstick Dutch Oven

Reference article website: Spice up red beans and rice with fresh additions by Chef Lou Rice

This is a Creole recipe with a Cajun flare. It uses kidney beans instead of red beans, but notice tomato sauce is an ingredient. Tomatoes, tomato paste, and tomato sauce often immediately distinguish a Creole recipe from a Cajun recipe.

All dry beans should be hand-sorted, rinsed twice with water and soaked according to any one of the following methods. Dry beans are a raw agricultural product and may contain dirt, stones and other debris.

Gas-Free Method

Beans cause gas because they contain indigestible sugars that ferment in our intestines. Fermentation of sugars produces carbon dioxide gas, and thus intestinal gas.

In a stockpot or dutch oven, place 1 pound of dry beans (sorted and rinsed) in 10 or more cups of boiling water; boil for 2-3 minutes, cover and set aside overnight. The next day approximately 75 to 90 percent of the indigestible sugars will have dissolved into the soaking water. Drain, and then rinse the beans thoroughly before cooking them.

From: beans4health website.

Quick Soak Method

Place 1 pound of sorted and rinsed beans in 8-10 cups of water. Bring to a boil and cook for two minutes. Turn off heat and set aside for one hour. Drain and rinse with water. Beans are now ready to cook.

Overnight Soak Method

Place 1 pound of sorted and rinsed beans in 8-10 cups of cold water. Cover and let soak over night. Drain and rinse beans before cooking.

Here’s my family’s red beans and rice recipe:

• 1 lb dry red beans, sorted, rinsed and soaked
• 1 lb seasoning meat, chopped into bite-sized pieces (ham or smoked sausage)
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 1/4 C. green bell pepper, chopped
• 2 celery sticks, chopped
• 1-3 toes of garlic, minced
• 1 bunch fresh parsley, washed and snipped
• 1/4 t. cayenne red pepper, or to taste
• 1 T. Tony Chachere’s Original (creole) Seasoning
• 1 large Bay Leaf
• 2 coursly chopped jalapeno peppers without the seeds, if desired
• salt, additional to taste (Tony’s has salt in the seasoning)
• 1 bunch green onions, washed and chopped
• Louisiana Red Hot Sauce to taste
• Rice, at least 2 cups dry (makes 4 cups cooked)
  

Render chopped sausage in 5-7 quart dutch oven, or brown chopped ham in 2 T. vegetable oil. Sausage makes sufficient grease to saute the vegetables.

I use a Le Creuset 7.25-qt. Round Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven
or a Calphalon 6-qt. Everyday Nonstick Dutch Oven The Le Creuset dutch oven comes in a variety of colors. The Calphalon dutch oven is black anodized aluminum and much lighter weight than cast iron.

Add onion, bell pepper, garlic, celery, and parsley and saute until tender.

Add the soaked beans and 8 cups water or stock. Add all seasonings except the green onions.

Bring to a boil and remove the bay leaf, reduce heat, cover, and simmer on low heat at least 4-6 hours. Stir occasionally and add water to keep the beans covered.

Test to see if beans are completely cooked by taking a few from different areas of the pot, allowing them to cool, and smashing them between your thumb and forefinger. If they smash easily and completely and nothing is left intact but the skin, they’re done.

Prepare rice according to package instructions or in rice-cooker.

Serve beans over rice with chopped green onion as a garnish. Have Louisiana Red Hot Sauce on the table for those who like to spice them up. Tabasco Sauce is also a good choice if you like things really hot. Serve with cornbread and a fresh pot of Community Coffee (I prefer freshly ground whole-bean gourmet Columbian).

Vegetarians: I’ve made this exact recipe without the meat before and it’s excellent. I used 2 T vegetable oil to saute the vegetables before adding the beans and water.

Recipe from Sherri Joubert

Make no mistake, beans and rice are an extremely healthy meal. One of the reasons to put dry beans on to cook all day is undercooked beans will make you sick. Undercooked rice will do the same.

Be sure you test the beans by taking a few from different areas of the pot, allowing them to cool to the touch, and smashing them between your thumb and forefinger. They should smash completely and easily. The only thing left intact should be the skin. I always cook my beans a minimum of 4 hours and usually 6 hours. The bean packages suggest 1.5 - 2 hours, but my beans have never been done after that cooking time. A long cooking time also makes red beans a great Crockpot dish.

Rice cooked according to package instructions or in a rice cooker is sufficient.

If you don’t have time for dry beans to cook thoroughly, use canned beans. They are completely cooked right out of the can. Instant rice is also readily available.

Here’s an article about why undercooked beans (legumes) and rice (grains) make you ill.